TO POSTUMUS.
Horace
Alas! my Postumus, my Postumus, the fleeting years gilde on; nor will
piety cause any delay to wrinkles, and advancing old age, and
insuperable death. You could not, if you were to sacrifice every passing
day three hundred bulls, render propitious pitiless Pluto, who confines
the thrice-monstrous Geryon and Tityus with the dismal Stygian stream,
namely, that stream which is to be passed over by all who are fed by the
bounty of the earth, whether we be kings or poor ninds. In vain shall we
be free from sanguinary Mars, and the broken billows of the hoarse
Adriatic; in vain shall we be apprehensive for ourselves of the noxious
South, in the time of autumn. The black Cocytus wandering with languid
current, and the infamous race of Danaus, and Sisyphus, the son of the
Aeolus, doomed to eternal toil, must be visited; your land and house and
pleasing wife must be left, nor shall any of those trees, which you are
nursing, follow you, their master for a brief space, except the hated
cypresses; a worthier heir shall consume your Caecuban wines now guarded
with a hundred keys, and shall wet the pavement with the haughty wine,
more exquisite than what graces pontifical entertainment.
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